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Post by mikef6 on Apr 19, 2018 4:44:57 GMT
Fallen Angel / Otto Preminger (1945). This crime/mystery thriller was Preminger’s follow-up to the more famous “Laura.” Preminger brought his leading man and most of the technical crew over from the earlier film (including cinematographer Joseph LaShelle whose moving camera is evident right from the start). Film noir scholar Eddie Muller believers that “Fallen Angel” is a “true noir,” but can’t say the same for “Laura.” He also believes that “Angel” should be as well-known and loved as its predecessor. I agree. In the opening scene, drifter Eric Stanton (Dana Andrews) gets kicked off the bus to San Francisco and lands a hundred miles short of his goal late at night in the small town of Walton with only a dollar in his pocket. He spends part of it at Pop’s (Percy Kilbride) café where most of the supporting cast (Kilbride, Charles Bickford, and Bruce Cabot) is waiting for Stella (Linda Darnell) to return. Seems every man in town has the hots for her and when she finally shows we find out why. Stanton uses con man skills, however, so talks his way into a place to stay and temp job with a travelling spiritualist (John Carradine) but soon finds himself obsessed by Stella. She, however, is as tough as he is and refuses to consider him unless he gets a lot of money. That is when he decides to marry local heiress June Mills (top-billed Alice Faye) and then steal her inheritance – but first he has to get by her eagle eyed older sister (Anne Revere). The movie is something is something of a slow burn but the finale is greatness itself. Highly recommended. Just a few minutes after this image, Dana Andrews and Alice Faye are seen sleeping together in that bed. Sure, they are a married couple but I thought it was still surprising considering the age of the film. I still remember all the jokes about married people sleeping in twin beds – or was that just on TV?
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Post by telegonus on Apr 22, 2018 7:21:14 GMT
Fallen Angel's a good one. A near forgotten Noir, even with that killer cast. It doesn't feel much like an Otto Preminger project to me; on the surface, I mean. Maybe, broadly speaking, thematically, not stylistically. Some solid offbeat casting, and the players up to the job.
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Post by london777 on Jun 5, 2018 22:39:13 GMT
Finally caught up with this again last night. My only previous viewing was as a youngish adult, so maybe forty or fifty years ago. Before I comment on the movie, let's talk about my mental problems.
I started to watch, wondering if my knowledge (this time round) of who dunnit (out of half a dozen plausible suspects) would affect my enjoyment. Well, I got a shock at the end, because the perpetrator was not whom I had (reasonably clearly) remembered. So confident was I that what I thought I remembered had actually existed that I spent an hour fruitlessly searching the internet for news of an alternative ending.
Have any other posters here experienced similar phenomena, or am I alone in my senile humiliation?
*** SPOILERS ***
As to the film, it is well worth watching, but somehow not entirely convincing, and I not sure why. Once completed, Darryl Zanuck insisted on fairly radical changes, mainly to magnify the supporting role of Linda Darnell (his then girlfriend). Maybe these diminished the film? Not that I would want any second of Darnell's scenes pruned back as she is the best thing in the movie, and it made her a star.
Hollywood lore has it that top-billed Alice Faye was so miffed by the slashing of her screen-time (including, mercifully, her full rendition of the dreary theme song) that she stormed off set and out of Hollywood movies, only returning fourteen years later for a string of nothing roles, when, presumably, there were bills to be paid. While this may be true, I think a further motivation was her realization, when watching the rushes, that she belonged to a previous epoch and Darnell was effortlessly stealing her limelight.
Faye was an intelligent star and, understanding that she no longer cut it in musicals, was attempting to start a second career as a dramatic actress, as others had done and would do, such as Doris Day, Ginger Rogers and Julie Andrews (other examples, please?) Certainly she does well enough here to suggest this was possible, but I just think it was the wrong part for her. Maybe if her part had been left intact, I would think differently. Certainly the speed with which she falls for Dana Andrews is somewhat absurd in the released version. Maybe her infatuation was traced out more gradually in the original? There would be no problem today. In the bedroom scene referred to by Mikef6 above she could be convincingly shown as a sex-starved spinster blinded by carnal desire, but in 1945 this could only be (too) mildly suggested.
Maybe, Mike, but he remained fully clothed and we know his plan depended on not consummating the marriage, and although she has stepped straight out of the shower she had immediately put on her "outdoors" overcoat, so the scene was as unerotic as possible.
My other main criticism is that the ending, though believable, was very rushed. One minute our hero was backed into a corner with nothing in his favor. The next, he has totally turned the tables by doing his own sleuthing which we are only now told about, not shown. Talk about "and with one bound he was free"!
The title presumably refers to the hero's redemption through love, having commenced the movie as a cynical conman and near-rapist. The poem (author please?) quoted said that only "two" could enter Paradise. But this process of "redemption though love" is barely touched on. Everything he does is to save his own neck. Maybe this is another casualty of Zanuck's changes?
Can anyone answer one question for me? The Charles Bickford character was a retired cop from the other coast, so a civilian. How come he was allowed command of the murder inquiry, even to the extent of severely beating witnesses? Could he have been deputized? Was this explained?
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